"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" 2 Cor 9:15. Today we set apart the day as a family to celebrate and worship our indescribable, unspeakable, inexpressible, too wonderful for words gift!
Sitting around the living room and sharing what God's gift means to each of us was precious. We discussed Jesus sacrificed for us and we are called to live as a living sacrifice in response (Romans 12:1). Then we allowed Stacia and Zander to open ONE GIFT.

This was followed with heartfelt popcorn prayer - as opposed to slow cooker prayers that go on and on for hours. ::snort::

Beware of the unintended traditions you are starting if you have a young family. Every year on Christmas Morning I would try to have fruit, cinnamon rolls, cereal, egg casseroles. A couple of years ago my Mom let me know the girls had brought our traditional cinnamon rolls to their Christmas morning breakfast. I thought, "Huh! I don't remember that being our tradition." A few weeks ago Nolan began to remind me we needed cinnamon rolls for Christmas. Michael and I have talked. Neither of us remember this being a particular tradition - other than I'd make or we'd buy some from Cinabon, "If we remembered." But the KIDS remember this differently....it isn't our tradition to have GRANOLA every Christmas morning...it's not our tradition to have FRUIT every Christmas morning....it IS OUR TRADITION TO HAVE CINNAMON ROLLS ON CHRISTMAS MORNING. Since we have changed most our traditions in the past four years, we wanted to make this one work. The problem arose when we FORGOT until Nolan mentioned last night, "Did you stop by Cinabon?"

This a.m. I was up bright and early seeing if I had the ingredients to make the famous cinnamon rolls I've not really baked since we lived in Hardin, MT (17 years ago). I was not surprised I did NOT have whipping cream in the house...nor brown sugar. I discovered COCONUT CREAM works well.....and the rapadura was "ok"....I did have a bit of white sugar left from last year's Christmas baking...enough to make the filling..... It was worth the effort.

Everyone appreciated the rolls....well...nearly everyone....Yuuki got Stacia's shawl, wrapped up in it and pouted because she didn't get to eat breakfast with us.

Michael went into the office today. He submitted our "dream sheet" for our next assignment. We really haven't seen that mean anything in the past. ::snort:: Arielle went to the mall with her friends, Emily and Alicia. Nolan and Stacia put together this:

Michael came home from the base with boxes....a couple more Christmas gifts have arrived....this package solved a mystery for us. We now know what Adrian Monk is doing now that his show has run it's course.... He's running the shipping dept for Vitacost! Beautiful! Amazing...most of our boxes arrive as a jumble.

Before we headed to base for the Candlelight service we had Stacia open a gift...she was thrilled...she received shoes, tights, this sparkly dress and black sweater with bling - all from the clearance aisles at Target in Nashville, TN. ::grin:: She was excited and loved wearing it all tonight.

It's our tradition to open Christmas Stockings after the service. This remains.....

I had no clue how much Arielle was looking forward to her Christmas Eve PJs. Finding the Cheerios box nearly did her in.